


Thanks for the Memories

by coldrottingtrees



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Depressed Sam Winchester, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 07:36:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldrottingtrees/pseuds/coldrottingtrees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the spn kink meme.</p><p>Original prompt:<br/>"I would love to read a fic where Sam hears some song on the radio (doesn't matter which one, author's choice!) and gets ridiculously mushy over it because it reminds him of someone (Jess? Dean? someone else?). If it's in front of Dean, I'd adore an awkward, stilted conversation between the two as Sam gets all teary-eyed."</p><p>http://spnkink-meme.livejournal.com/82267.html?thread=30550619#t30550619</p><p>Title is (adapted) from a Fall Out Boy song.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thanks for the Memories

“You’re listening to Classic Hits 99.3, the Eagle. That was Electric Light Orchestra with ‘Don’t Bring Me Down.’ In the next hour, you’ll be hearing classic hits from the Beatles, Steve Miller Band, Bob Seger, and more. So keep that dial tuned to 99-3, the Eagle. Next up, Asia with ‘Heat of--”

Sam turned the radio off.

“Hey,” Dean barked.

“Yeah, I know,” Sam said dryly. “I don’t care care. That’s one song I’m not listening to again. Bite me.”

Dean made a little surprised face at Sam’s aggressive reaction and dropped it. Sometimes, Dean had the good graces to back off.

“You, uh… wanna pick something else to put on? This drive’s boring as shit, I need some tunes, man.”

“Yeah, ok,” Sam said, twisting the dial to change the station _before_ turning the volume back up. He cycled through various stations, skipping past talk radio, church music, Spanish music, and country, before finding an alternative station.

Dean groaned quietly but didn’t say anything else.

Dean was the sort of guy who demonstrated things non-verbally. Sam was more of a talker, but he knew how to interpret his brother’s “language.” And Sam could appreciate how much of a sincere “I did wrong by you and I’m sorry” it was for Dean to both let Sam pick the music _and_ to tolerate a contemporary station.

It was a good place to start.

The tail end of a commercial ended and then a song started playing. It started with a drum line and then a strong intro of guitars, and Sam’s eyes went out-of-focus as his mind was immediately thrust fully into another time and place in his life.

“Ugh, what is this, ‘emo’ or something?” Dean complained.

 _“Am I more than you bargained for yet? I’ve been dying to tell you anything you want to hear, ‘cause that’s just who I am this week,”_ the song began.

“Shut up, Dean,” Sam whispered, his voice weak and far away.

Dean looked over, stunned. He didn’t even make a snarky comment about Sam getting girlishly emotional. He took one look and, again, dropped it.

Sam felt a tickle in his nose as tears started welling up in his eyes.

“Jess loved Fall Out Boy,” Sam said. He was frustrated by how tearful his voice was. He was trying to sound normal but it wasn't working at all. He laughed, a choked, watery sound, and shook his head. “Like, obsessed. This song… it was all over the radio…” Sam stopped, cleared his throat. “When she died. It was getting really overplayed.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean said quietly, eyes on the road, jaw tense.

“Man, it’s been so long since I did this,” Sam said with a self-deprecating laugh, wiping his eyes. “I really thought I was done with this.”

_“We’re going down, down, in an earlier round, and Sugar we’re going down swinging…”_

Sam remembered hanging out in Jess’s dorm room. Laying tightly squeezed on her twin-size bed, close enough he could see the spikes of dark blue in her otherwise grey-blue eyes. Fall Out Boy was playing from the new iPod and speakers she’d been so excited to get. Sam had been in love with her iPod, too, and hoped to get one of his own some day.

“I’ll be your number one with a bullet,” he sang to her, running his fingers through her beautiful, curly blonde hair. “A loaded gun meh-meh-meh, cock it and pull it,” he sang with a laugh, mumbling over the bit he didn’t know.

Jess giggled, and Sam was smiling so much it actually made his cheeks ache. He always played up screwing up that line, because it made Jess laugh. She gazed at him like he was her favorite thing in the world, and it made Sam’s heart race. He felt like he was worth something when Jess looked at him like that.

“You dork,” she smiled, draping her hands around behind his neck.

“And you still like me anyway,” he teased.

“I think you’re pretty great, actually,” she said, trailing soft kisses from his lips, across his cheek, down his jaw and neck.

 

“I’m never going to be happy like that again,” Sam admitted quietly, tears dripping from his chin. “I’ve tried a couple times, but it’s never going to happen. Not for us, not the way we live. I got one really good moment in my life, and now it’s gone. Forever.”

“C’mon, Sam, that’s not true,” Dean said awkwardly. Unconvincingly. He was trying.

“Maybe,” Sam murmured, a concession he didn’t actually believe just to end the conversation. He reached out and turned the dial, finding 99.3 again.

Dean gave Sam a quick squeeze on the shoulder, and Sam gave his hand a pat in thanks. Dean put his hand back on the wheel, and Sam turned to watch the side of the road going by out the passenger window, lost in his own thoughts.


End file.
